Pop says Spurs looked like 'deer in headlights'

10:33 PM ET

OAKLAND, Calif. — The shorthanded San Antonio Spurs thought they had adequately prepared for Game 1 of the Western Conference playoffs against Golden State, but coach Gregg Popovich expressed surprise and disappointment Saturday in a squad he said “looked like a deer in headlights” in a 113-92 loss.

“I thought we were very prepared physically and mentally,” Popovich said. “But I was mistaken. As I said, we looked like deer in the headlights. The defense was really poor as far as following game plan of the first quarter, and it’s a bad combination to play defense like that and not shoot at the other end.”

Draymond Green downplayed the Warriors’ poor finish to the regular season, saying after Saturday’s Game 1 win over the Spurs, “We’re a championship ball club. We know what it takes this time of year in order to win.”

For as decorated a career as LeBron James has enjoyed, he has been at his absolute best in one particular realm: the first round of the playoffs.

Golden State outscored San Antonio 40-24 in 16 minutes with its starting lineup on the floor, as it put together a defensive efficiency rating of 71.1. With the lineup of Iguodala, Thompson, Durant, Green and McGee on the floor, the Warriors didn’t allow an offensive rebound and outscored San Antonio 16-6 in the paint, while connecting on 64 percent from the field, according to research from ESPN Stats & Information.

“That’s fair enough. Hats off to Golden State,” Murray said. “They did what they’re supposed to do, which is protect home court. They won the first game. I think we came out not mentally prepared. As a group, there could be four guys prepared and one not prepared, but at the end of the day it’s a group. When you’ve got one half prepared and one half not prepared, it doesn’t work. I thought we were not mentally prepared. They made shots and they executed and they did what they did.”

Veteran guard Danny Green characterized the Spurs as a team that was “overly excited,” having made the postseason for the 21st consecutive year, despite a turbulent season rife with highs and lows with the Spurs competing without their best player in two-time All-Star forward Kawhi Leonard.

“We had a lot of juices flowing, adrenaline, rushing,” Green said. “Some were a little bit strong. We were overreacting to a lot of things because we’re so excited we’re in the playoffs, and playing the best team in the world.”

San Antonio entered the postseason considering itself underdogs against the defending champion Warriors. Having shouldered the offensive load for the entire season with Leonard out of the picture, power forward LaMarcus Aldridge struggled, scoring 14 points on 5-of-12 shooting.

Aldridge said the extra attention applied by Golden State’s defense caused him to “overthink” things. The Spurs finished with an efficiency rating of 38 percent in the paint but received only 13 opportunities with a player getting his first touch of a possession in the paint, which registered as 16 fewer chances than the Warriors. San Antonio took only eight shots in the paint, according to Second Spectrum.

“We’ve got to regroup; feel hurt, upset, kind of desperate,” veteran guard Manu Ginobili said. “We don’t want to go home [down] 0-2. But at the same time, we’ve got to be smarter. Offensively, we’re going to have to move the ball better, sharper, be more aggressive and see what happens. We are underdogs. We’ve talked about it. To get a win here, we’ve got to overachieve. We’ve got to do better than we think we can do [to] even [the series]. So we’ll fight as hard as we can in Game 2.”